As many people are starting to realize, sitting is the new smoking–it’ll kill you faster than a bowlful of trans fats. But standing still in front of your computer all day isn’t so great either. What you need is a combo sit-stand desk, preferably one that’s easy to adjust, and that doesn’t use a motor.
That’s the Perch. It’s a super-adjustable desk that sits on top of your regular desk, raising your keyboard, mouse computer and even a secondary screen to the correct level.
The design came about after Nick Salisbury got fidgety at his 9-5 desk job. “[I] found myself slipping away from this active lifestyle I loved and falling helplessly into a life of sitting,” he says. Research showed him that existing desks were either too expensive or not easily adjustable, so he got together with friends and set up Perch.
The most important feature of the Perch is its adjustment system, which lets you change the height of its shelves on the fly, even when they’re loaded with a heavy computer monitor. The Baltic birch plywood shelves have tongues that protrude from the side and hook into a kind of ratcheted notch system that is routed out of the side panels. This, along with handles cut into the edges, lets you grab a shelf, tilt it to unlock it, then lift or lower it. The shelf then seats itself correctly when you’re done.
The rest of the design is just as clever. Holes are cut in the rear of each shelf for cables to pass through and stay out of the way as you adjust shelf height. The top shelf is actually two overlapping shelves that can hold a monitor and a notebook at different heights, which actually puts the screens at the same height as each other. This is ergonomically sound, as it keeps you from having to nod your head constantly while you work.